Earlier Mumbaiites knew all of the south as Madras, today, KGF has put the spotlight on the Kannada film industry: RGV

Renowned filmmaker Ram Gopal Varma, popularly known as RGV, was in Bengaluru over the weekend to officially announce his next directorial with Real Star Upendra and launch its first look poster too. The first look of the pan-India film, about the ‘deadliest gangster ever’, was revealed by Kiccha Sudeep.

Speaking on the occasion, RGV, who has been very outspoken about his love and fascination for the Yash-starrer KGF: Chapter 2, reminisced about a time when the Hindi belt had no clue about the south and thought of it all as Madras (Chennai), and how a film like KGF has put the spotlight firmly on the Kannada film industry.

“When I first went to Mumbai, the people there did not know anything about the south and called it Madrasi. Except for Madras, they did not know anything else. Then came a time, when people like me, from the Telugu and Tamil film industries, considered Kannada a small industry. Then came a time when a distributor from Mumbai called me and asked, “Kannada Hyderabad se kitna door hai? He didn’t even know that Kannada was a language. Today, we are at a time when the entire country, and the world is talking about the Kannada film industry. I think this is something that everyone in Karnataka has to be very proud of. My heartiest congratulations to Prashant Neel and Yash for making this miracle happen. Suddenly, everyone’s eyes are on the Kannada film industry. It is a great opportunity for highly-talented stars and technicians to keep pushing the ball that Prashant started rolling. It’s highly inspirational,” said RGV, before talking about his own film.

Earlier, in a series of tweets, the filmmaker had written about KGF: Chapter 2, “The MONSTER success of KGF 2 is a clear proof that if money is spent on MAKING and not wasted on STAR RENUMERATIONS bigger QUALITY and BIGGEST HITS will come. Forget Hindi film industry, not even telugu and Tamil film industries ever took Kannada film industry seriously till KGF and now @prashanth_neel put it on the world map. Like very much how Rocky Bhai comes to Mumbai to machine gun the villains, @TheNameIsYash is literally machine gunning all the Bollywood stars opening collections and it’s final collections will be a nuclear bomb thrown on Bollywood from Sandalwood. @prashanth_neel ‘s #KGF2 is not just a gangster film but It’s also a HORROR film for the Bollywood industry and they will have nightmares about it’s success for years to come.”